Management or optimization of network user data packet traffic is often conducted at locations where traffic is directed through equipment that can inspect and process traffic flows and take appropriate actions. In mobile network architectures, management equipment may be located at the border between the mobile data access network and one or more external wide-area data networks (e.g., the Internet).
In order to manage user data traffic, the management equipment typically needs to distinguish or classify data packets in a traffic flow. For example, the equipment may need to determine which data packets in the traffic flow are being transferred to/from a user equipment terminal operating on the mobile network. In further examples, the equipment may need to determine a specific data application type operating on the user equipment terminal, or any other similar classification.
In addition, it may be useful to determine control information about the user equipment terminal in the mobile network architecture. The control information may provide relevant details for management and/or adjustment of the mobile network. The term “control information” may refer to information such as network attachment information, and/or radio link quality information.
The network attachment information provides relevant details about a current status of the mobile network. For example, the network attachment information may include information such as a type of serving radio access network (RAN) in the mobile network architecture, characteristics of the serving network, a serving base station ID, a serving base station cell ID, etc. The network attachment information may be useful for controlling the operation of the management equipment, for example.
However, the data packets in the traffic flow, themselves, do not carry readable control information. For example, neither data packet headers, payloads in the data packets, nor any other parts of the data packets that could be inspected by the management equipment, carry network attachment information details. Thus, the management equipment cannot rely on the content of the data packets to determine the control information. Without the control information, the management equipment has difficulty identifying the type of access network of the data flow, access network characteristics of the data flow, or where a particular user equipment terminal in the data flow is operating, for example. Similarly, the management equipment would have difficulty detecting changes in network attachment information such as handover from one serving network to another.
Additionally, it may be beneficial to determine the control information outside of equipment within a RAN of the data flow. For example, the management equipment may measure or estimate the quality of a radio link connecting equipment of individual users to a serving base station. Radio link quality measurements are typically carried out by equipment within the Radio Access Network (RAN) including the actual base station equipment, or the user radio (e.g. smartphone), or by both. The ability to accurately infer radio link quality metrics based on data transmission characteristics can be useful for applications such as data-plane packet delivery optimization and, in such cases, it is advantageous to be able to make such inferences without having to rely on receiving metrics from the RAN equipment. The ability for management equipment located outside of the RAN equipment to infer radio link quality without relying on RAN equipment supports autonomous data-plane determination of individual link quality and may be applied for example to cases where integration with RAN equipment metrics is not practical, or in cases where RAN equipment does not provide such radio link quality metrics, such as in the cases of small-cell and ad-hoc Wi-Fi networks.
It would therefore be beneficial for traffic management equipment to determine control information associated with a traffic flow when the management equipment receives data packets in the traffic flow, which do not directly contain the control information.